Abstract [en]

The Dark Triad is described as three undesirable personality traits consisting of machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy. The purpose of the present study was to analyze to what extent the dark traits occur at different levels of management, and furthermore how gender and age relate. The study was originally conducted by Eklund och Hultman (2015) with 101 respondents in a senior company position in Sweden (47 were women, 51 were male and three did not indicate gender). Of the respondents surveyed, 13 managers supervised at group level, 39 at middle level and 49 at management level. The age range varied between 24 and 64 years. The study consisted of a questionnaire with 80 questions, 27 of these questions were statements about Short Dark Triad (SD3) that aimed to measure machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy. The results showed a positive trend between machiavellianism and higher management level, and that the mean values for narcissism and psychopathy increased when moving to higher management level. Men generally showed higher traits of the Dark Triad than women which was consistent with previous research. Age also correlated negatively with machiavellanism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy, which indicates that the Dark Triad was less frequent among older Swedish managers.